21 October, 2015

Mod Watch – Star Wars: Empire At War: FoC, Legacy Era

By
Kyle Shimmin

We reach the furthest point along the now renounced Star
Wars canon as we delve into the Legacy Era; a time when new Star Destroyers
look more archaic than their ancient predecessors, and the Jedi have been
erased once more. It’s a good time to be Imperial again.

Legacy Era

The Legacy era is one of those really awesome areas of the
Star Wars timeline that most fans have never heard of and they likely never
will, because of Disney’s renunciation of the old lore, this entire period will
probably be rewritten by the new movies. For the record, I think it’s the right
approach for Disney, but it does mean that the wider fan base will probably
never experience the insane odyssey of Darth Krayt, or witness the drug-addled
depths to which a Skywalker can descend. And don’t get me started on the
Imperial Knights, those boys and girls are the hottest thing since the advent
of the Star Destroyer. The later days of the Legacy era were (I believe)
entirely chronicled through comics, the Legacy and Legacy –War series, I’m not
a particularly well-versed fan of comics, but for what it’s worth I thought
both were great reads. Not so much the second shorter Legacy series that came
later following Ania Solo, no that thing nearly bored me to tears.

Legacy Era: Second Imperial Civil War is the only mod I’ve
encountered that explores this time, and unfortunately the 1.0 version released
more than two years ago, has some substantial bugs as well other areas of
weakness. A 1.1 patch was also released, which fixes some but not all of the
issues.

Two factions vie for dominance in this mod; the Krayt Empire
and the Galactic Alliance, both are substantial with swelling rosters of space
units, but there are only two. The Second Imperial Civil War (time period) had
three major factions two of which were Imperial, the one with the red hot
Imperial Knights is disappointingly absent, meaning technically it isn’t an
civil war at all because there’s only one Imperial faction.

So no Star Destroyer on Star Destroyer action in this mod, at
least not of the proportions I’m looking for, but there is an impressive
assortment of completely new, great-looking starships for both factions. Necessary
of course, because the mod is set around 130 ABY; technology has moved on
substantially, yet somehow to my eye at least, this era’s Star Destroyers look
older in design than even the Old Republic’s Harrowers. Regardless, there’s a
lot of interesting ships to throw into battle on both sides, in my experience
battles usually degrade into a violent maelstrom of heavy craft just slugging
it out. The more forces you commit, the worse (or indeed better, because it’s
great to behold) it gets.

The Krayt Empire overflows with Star Destroyers and smaller
ships that bear the same pleasing wedge shape; like the Ardent seen above and the
taller Apprehender, with the Pellaeon-class forming the backbone of the
fleets. The Pellaeon’s are juggernauts
in their own right, but they pale in comparison to both the heavier
Imperious-class and Krayt’s own Dragon ships, seen left to right below. (Click
to enlarge).

On the Galactic Alliance (formerly the New Republic) side of
things, ship designs see the hammer-head shapes of the Old Republic meet the
organic curves of the Mon Calamari. From left to right you can see the bulky
forms of the Tri-Scythe-class frigate and Scythe-class main battle cruiser,
followed by the only hero character in the game, Cade Skywalker, piloting the
Mynock. (Click to enlarge).

Sadly though, Second Imperial Civil War is riddled with bugs
of varying severity. Some are as simple and harmless as missing unit
descriptions and names, annoying but otherwise a nonissue, but every now a
again you’ll enter a system patrolled by some unnamed aging Star Destroyer
variant with a seemingly invincible hardpoint, or better still, no textures. I’ve
also never been able to fully finish the (single) Galactic Conquest scenario as
it seems impossible to reach the Nal Hutta system to capture it.

Not all of the mod’s problems are strictly bugs, there are
design decisions I take issue with too, though I suspect most simply need more
development to be fully realised. With any new campaign map comes some amount
of learning, you have to study the hyperspace roots and determine exactly how
each system is linked to those around it. Ideally, each is connected only to
some of its neighbours, because that makes visual sense on the game’s 2D map.
In this mod however that’s not quite the case, some areas are logical but there
are plenty of spots where planetary systems form some elaborate mesh structure
that you really have to eyeball and map out with a fleet to fully understand.
Doing so isn’t particularly fun, but systems interlinked in such a way make
defending your territory a much harder proposition; more ships to cover more
angles is expensive, I found myself frequently stretched thin and overwhelmed
by my enemies attacks. It is an interesting tweak to the flow of the high-level
battle, I’m not convinced its implemented particularly well in this mod, but I
see techniques appeal. Perhaps a greater
consideration, there’s almost no ground combat and thus no real roster of
ground units to speak of. Despite not being a massive fan of the game’s ground
component, its presence is missed, if nothing else ground combat provided additional
strategic consideration to the campaign. I’ve come to understand by reading
some of the developer’s posts that it’s something that they had planned to develop
in the future.

One thing the campaign does to great effect, and partially
because of the loss of the ground component, is introduce a new starship-based
economy. Traditionally, credits were generated by mining facilities on planets and
thus star systems were more than mere battlefields, in Second Imperial Civil
War though starships; freighters and haulers, generate income. You rely on
merchant fleets, consisting of aging warships ill-suited for actual combat, so watching
an enemy fleet, even a small one jump into a system housing such ships is heart
stopping. When your merchant fleets burn, you’re losing more than just ships,
you’re witnessing the erosion of your economy; your powerbase. The feeling is a
powerful one, but it can be mitigated by carefully managing the deployment of
these ships, keeping them gathered in one of two systems can proved disastrous,
as I found out first hand.

Second Imperial Civil War isn’t flawless in its execution
but it’s the only source of Legacy era action I have encountered, the units are
all present and pretty, with some interesting changes to the campaign. No doubt
I would have grumbled less had I not been spoilt by the Thrawn’s Revenge mod we
took a look at last week, here’s the other eras we’ve explored: